Welcome to my blog! This month, I'm showcasing lots of retellings of Beauty and the Beast, one of my favorite fairy tales. Today we have a dark, contemporary retelling, Bargain with the Beast by April Andrews.
When Tobias Thorn sees a hooded figure abducting a young girl, he
doesn’t think twice before racing to the girl’s rescue. Only he isn’t
quite quick enough...because the next thing Tobias knows he’s waking up
in a cavernous room, his hands and wrists bound to an equally cavernous
bed, with his chances of escape looking pretty damn slim.
But
Tobias is not a man to take things lying down. He’s going to find his
way back home no matter what it takes! But then he meets his abductor
and realizes things aren’t quite that simple. Tobias has entered a world
unlike anything he has ever known before. If he wants his freedom,
there is only one way he is going to get it, by making a bargain with
the Beast...
Excerpt:
“You’ve abducted me,” Tobias said, his tongue suddenly feeling too big
for his mouth. “Chained me to the bed. You’re not letting me leave. Why
on Earth would I be attracted to you?”
The Beast smiled, and as he did so Tobias couldn’t help but notice the
way his yellow eyes seemed to glow. “Because you’re responding to my
desires,” he said. “The fact that I want you? You feel it and you’re
responding to it.”
His words were so close to what Tobias had thought as they walked the
tunnels of this underground town that he shivered. If he didn’t know
better, he’d start to think the Beast was a mind reader or something.
From the beginning—and it was just a few hours ago—it was like this man
knew exactly how Tobias was going to act, how he was going to respond,
even what he was going to say. It was too much. Too intense on top of
everything that had already happened. Tobias held up his hands. “Stop,”
he said. “Just stop.”
The Beast sighed, and then to Tobias’ absolute horror, and intense,
unwelcome delight, he took the edges of his tee-shirt…and in one smooth
move he pulled it over his head.
Tobias could do nothing but gape at him. Shock fizzling through every
cell of his being. The Beast was muscled in all the right places, worse,
he was dusted in a light sprinkling of tawny hair, and Tobias had
always been a sucker for hairy men. The urge to step forward, to run his
hands over those muscles, made Tobias gasp again. He could imagine
catching his fingers in the curls…tugging on them…
He swallowed hard. His hands itched, his heart raced, and his cock
thickened in an instant. The reaction was so swift, so visceral, that
Tobias didn’t know what to think of it. He could only take a deep
shuddery breath.
“There is no stopping,” the Beast said, his eyes fixed hard on Tobias.
“Not now. Not after you ran. Perhaps if you had done as I asked I would
have been able to control myself for longer.” He shrugged. “But you’ve
awoken it now, Tobias. I can’t stop it.”
“I—”
“Feel it, Tobias,” the Beast added. “It is pulsing between us. There is only one way to sate it.”
“It?” Tobias asked. “It?”
The Beast smiled. “Desire,” he said. “It’s been there from the very
beginning. It has always been just a matter of time until I had you.”
He is not for you…
Those words spoken to Gregovitch, the words spoken now, they brought a
million different images to Tobias’ mind, and it was ridiculous but he
actually felt weak-kneed. He knew exactly what the Beast was talking
about, and he shuddered at the thought of doing those things, not
because he didn’t want to, but because he did, so badly…in that moment
Tobias realized why he had taken so long to run, why he had let his
curiosity override his fear.
He wanted to be fucked by the Beast.
But he didn’t want to want it.
“I just want to go home,” he whispered.
The Beast lowered his hands until they were on the top of his jeans.
Tobias gulped at the intent of that movement. “Only I have the power to
grant that,” he said.
“Because you rule here,” Tobias breathed.
“Precisely.”
“Then grant it,” Tobias said. “Please.”
The Beast shook his head, and then slowly, like he wanted Tobias to see
every movement, he popped the button of his jeans. “That is not how it
works,” he said. “Here if you want something you have to give
something.”
And so Tobias asked, though he feared he already knew the answer to his question. “What do you want?”
“The same thing I have wanted since I set eyes on you.”
“I prefer to pick my lovers,” Tobias said. “Not have them forced on me.”
The Beast laughed and pulled on his zipper. “You would like nothing
better than to have me in your bed, and, I suspect, some force will
simply arouse you all the more.”
“No.”
“Yes, Tobias,” he said, almost chidingly. “I see the lust darken your
eyes when you look at me. You want this. You want me to bend you over
and sink my cock into your pucker.”
Tobias’ dick pulsed and he closed his eyes, as if to block out the images the Beast’s words had created. “No…”
“You want me to force inch after inch of my length into your luscious lips.”
And thickened ever further. “No…”
“And we’re going to do that, Tobias,” the Beast whispered. “There is no choice anymore. Not if you want what only I can give.”
Tobias snapped his eyes open. “To go home.”
“Precisely.”
“So if I do this…”
The Beast removed his hands from his zipper and crossed his arms. “Then I may grant your request.”
“May?”
“If you are as beautiful as I suspect,” the Beast said. “If it is as
good as I have been imagining it will be.” He paused, and then he
smiled, that same smile that had made Tobias shudder in the very
beginning. “If you please me then yes, Tobias Thorn, I will allow you to
go home.”